Mexican teenager used social websites to kidnap people

Mexico City, Jan 17 (IANS/EFE) A teenaged youth who allegedly kidnapped students he met via social networking websites has been arrested in Mexico, officials said.

Pedro Lopez Biffano, 19, who was holding a student hostage, was arrested during the weekend in Puebla state in central Mexico, the Puebla state attorney general’s office said.

The suspect was demanding 100,000 pesos ($8,100) in cash and two vehicles in exchange for the student’s release, the office said.

Biffano was arrested near a hospital as he prepared to collect the cash.

Police found the hostage handcuffed to a bed at Biffano’s house.

Biffano later confessed he planned and carried out 14 kidnappings.

He started a friendship with them and later invited them to meet in the city’s main plaza, the attorney general’s office said.

He tricked and took them to a motel in downtown Puebla or his house, where he handcuffed his victims once they were alone, and obtained information about their relatives, family assets, financial condition and telephone numbers, it said.

Biffano made his ransom demand the same day, asking for between 10,000 pesos and 100,000 pesos, as well as vehicles.

The attorney general’s office said the accused threatened his victims before releasing them, telling them that if they notified police he would search for them and kill them and their families.

Biffano also confessed before investigators that he and three accomplices robbed at least 15 service stations in Puebla.

–IANS/EFE